Nuclear waste plan needed

11:58 PM,
Aug. 30, 2013

Written by

Bloomberg News
Guest editorial

During the half century that nuclear energy has been in use, U.S. reactors have produced some 70,000 tons of spent fuel, most of which lies cooling in pools of water at power plants across the country.

This is far from the end of the road for the used fuel rods, which will remain radioactive for thousands of years. The plan is to put them into enormous steel-and-concrete casks that can eventually be entombed in a deep, sturdy repository - specifically, as Congress decreed in 1987, Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

That plan has long been delayed, however, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has led ...